The original barre method is over 60 years old. Barre has changed so much over the years and a lot of Lotte’s original moves have been lost and the true beauty of the technique along with it. With roots in dance, not fitness, it’s a unique body system that works you inside out. The benefits are endless and how it makes you feel, priceless. It’s musical, it’s sensual and it is highly effective.

PHYSICALLY

You will work your core so deeply, yet safely and will literally shave inches off your waist. The tiny, targeted moves tone and lengthen without bulk. Lower back pain is eased, you’ll stand taller, improve flexibility and move with the grace of a dancer. Also eases symptoms of peri-menopause and menopause.

MINDFULLY

You will feel so connected to your body because you are learning to control tiny parts of you. And despite the physicality, it really is quite meditative.

EROTICALLY

There is a section on the pelvic floor called ‘the inner spirit’, which Lotte believed was the most important element of the class. Clients all report stronger orgasms ad increased sex drive, which is why it is also wonderful for women entering the peri menopause, menopause and beyond. Working so much in a light tilt and a lot of the stretches conjures up your sexual energy, like a kundalini awakening.

Extract taken from The Lotte Berk Book of Exercises, Jean Prince 1978 which beautifully sums up the history and spirit of Lotte Berk.

When you first meet Lotte Berk you notice her black hair, shining with a rich, deep gloss and her dark eyes bright with mischief. When she demonstrates her exercises with swift, nimble agility you envy her shapely legs and slim youthful figure. Petite and attractive, her whole personality is alive with a magnetism that cannot fail to attract you.

Lotte is truly a physical, sensual woman who has attracted men throughout her life - seven times married, twice on paper, with a hundred lovers in between. Looking back, Lotte feels it was her earlier insecurity and constant need for the stimulation of new love, sex and new happenings that drew her from one love affair to the next. Each new love, sex and new happenings drew her from one love affair to the next. Each new love taking her into the different worlds of painters, musicians, and dancers - each phase bringing a new circle of friends that read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the artistic world.

When Lotte chatters gaily about her life, flitting quickly from one escapade to the next, you cannot fail to relish the taste of the drama, excitement and passions that make her life so rich. She recalls her early career in modern ballet, when at eighteen she danced for the cream of conductors and producers: Bruno Walter, Fritz Busch and Carl Ebert at the famous Salzburg Festival in Austria. Then as an emigrant, persecuted by the Nazis for being a Jew, she left behind a decadent era in Germany and came to England - outrageous and blase. ‘In those early days in England life was hard. Our escape from Germany had left us penniless. We found one room near Edgware Road and my husband Ernest and I slept on the floor. Our baby daughter slept in the suitcase and Mimi, my maid, slept in the bed. No work, no money and I couldn’t speak English!’

A bleak situation, enough to make most people give up hope. But Lotte - a survivor - fought back, loving the excitement and drama of building a completely new life. After a year of tremendous struggle, Lotte was discovered by Madame Rambert. She graced the stage at Covent Garden and was acclaimed as a great dancer in modern ballet.

‘But as any dancer knows, operas and musicals don’t run forever. When the show is finished it’s back to auditions and the search for new work. I loved dancing and needed the money, so I took anything I was offered from low-brow to high-brow. From night-clubs, which I hated, to musicals and operas, which I loved. I adored dancing at the Glyndebourne and Edinburgh Festivals and was most happy when I gave my own recitals’.

‘Life then, in the 1930s was so full. I was never bored. I went to lots of parties, art balls at the Suffolk Gallery, and practically lived at the Cafe Royal, which was then the place for young artists. In those days anyone who looked foreign, a bit different, was either laughed at or loved. Me? I was loved. Although I was not beautiful I seemed to attract men and, feeling so insecure, usually reacted to their flattery and attention’.

Eventually, Lotte’s need for love overtook her need for dancing when at last, an all-consuming love, so precious and wonderful, drew her away from the stage. But this, her greatest love, became her greatest tragedy. The end was so sad that Lotte will never talk about it. Anything else she will happily disclose but this chapter of her life must remain untold.

For five months Lotte shut herself away. In solitude she read the five volumes of Psychological Commentaries by Maurice Nicol (1884 - 1953) and from his works found a feeling of contentment and security that changed her life. From that tragedy Lotte’s spirit fought back once more. She revived her life by moving in a new direction - with twenty years experience in modern ballet she dedicated her life to teaching women the art of obtaining a beautiful figure through exercise.

Then fate struck once more: an accident locked her lumbar spine and X-rays showed she would be crippled for life. Lotte refused to accept it - she exercised and exercised and exercised her back until, just fourteen days later, she proudly walked into her doctor’s surgery. Her indomitable strength and spirit had triumphed again!

Life then ‘took-off’ once more. With the addition of orthopaedic movements Lotte styled her exercises and devised her unique method which is so famous today. In all walks of life Lotte is now acclaimed as the greatest women in the field of physical fitness. To her pupils she is something very special: ‘she applies her great knowledge of the body with a lot of human understanding’ and they call her ‘little boss’.

Her flat reflects her zany personality: the bathroom is covered with hand-painted murals, tigers hovering above the mirror waiting to pounce. Tropical birds fly over the ceiling and luscious tempting fruit fight for your attention alongside exotic plants. This painted paradise spills out into the bedroom and winds its way over the wall, leaving enough room for a mass of paintings by famous artists.

The original shopaholic - she buys expensive clothes to relieve a spate of boredom and nips around London in a racy custom-built black mini, complete with brown corduroy interior to match her eyes and a gold insignia ‘LB’ on the door. Still sexy and sensual - ‘given a chance, sex and mischief never die’ says Lotte as the beautiful men still lurk in the wings. ‘It’s strange, but all my life I feared that one day I would be alone. But now, with a deeper understanding of life, I have inner peace and am quite happy to live alone in my flat. In fact I find freedom fantastic’.

‘Although I feel that fundamentally we don’t change, the works of Maurice Nicoll have taught me inner awareness. I now know that to give true happiness you must first look after your own happiness. If you can understand this, without thinking I’m conceited, then you know that it is very hard work to find true happiness alone’.

Emotionally Lotte has changed but physically she is still the same. She once danced in Peter Pan as Tiger Lily but now, born in 1913, she still bubbles and lives the part of the modern Peter Pan with the petite shapely body and energies of a young woman.

Lotte is truly unique. At sixty-five she looks forty-five. Sexually she is 45. Deep within she feels eighteen and holds the secret of youth.

I loved contemporary dance growing up and studied the techniques of Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham at college. Always regretting not pursuing a career in dance, I found myself working in the advertising industry, just catching the tail end of it’s hedonistic days. During this time I discovered some videos of The Lotte Berk Technique, the version that Lydia Bach had brought to New York. I loved this powerful exercise system with it’s tiny, yet sexy moves that had roots in contemporary and would practice them in my bedroom. After finding myself a single mother to my daughter, the advertising business lost its sparkle and I decided to retrain as a Pilates teacher. Pilates is a fantastic technique, but wasn’t my passion, it wasn’t my calling, it wasn't 'my one'.

A friend told me of a studio in Richmond teaching The Lotte Berk Method, so I emailed Vicki Anstey at Barreworks - the UK’s first boutique barre studio saying I was desperate to train under her. After one class Vicki said she would train me and I completed the Teacher Training programme and was teaching at the studio not long after, earning my stripes very quickly as Vicki went away for a two week holiday and left me in charge! I loved teaching barre. The dancier side of it and the original Lottier version of it appealed and I loved that I could combine it with my deep love of house music and disco. Listening to the Larry Levan edit of the track ‘Work That Body’ by Taana Gardner one night, the concept Disco Barre came like a lightning bolt and I trademarked it the next day. I started the class soon after in a brilliant, cool space in Dalston called Barbers Gym. The barres were made of scaffolding. It was underground and it was original and attracted a real following and received some brilliant press and ‘best barre class’ in London column inches.

Nearly 6 years later I wondered what more training I could do. I really wanted to learn something specifically for women, something divinely feminine that would help them enter their power. I knew it would come to me and one day I saw on Instagram that someone in America had trained with Esther Fairfax, Lotte’s daughter recently. Well, with Lotte as a muse, of course I’d read Esther's autobiography ‘My Improper Mother and Me’ a few years back and I felt like I knew Esther who’s warmth and charm leaped out from the page. I sent an email to Esther’s son, Jo and out of character for me, not hearing back after one day I decided to call the number given on the site, not expecting Esther to pick up. I knew it was her on the phone immediately and got a bit starstruck, but we struck up an easy conversation and even though she said at the start of it that she was no longer training anyone, by the end of the call we’d agreed that I would visit her in Hungerford to take a class the following week. We spoke on the phone again, speaking of our ‘good feeling about this’, although she did say in a mischievous tone, ‘well, I might not like the look of you, you never know?’.

Well, she did! And pretty soon I was leaving London at the crack of dawn every week to travel down to Hungerford to take a class and then spend the morning training and doing a lot of talking! Esther has so many tales and she is a very curious lady, so wanted to know all about my life too. We bonded over music and dance and the arts and Esther often said how like her mother I was in many ways. Very quickly Esther was gifting me the absolutely incredible honour of preserving this technique, the original, pure Lotte, beautiful, perfect technique. By bringing it back to London, it’s original home and to train others to teach it.

I have fallen in love. I didn’t think it was possible again after creating my own concept, my own baby, Disco Barre, but this technique is magical. It’s something special. It’s definitely not a normal fitness class. It works wonders for your body and it has helped so many of my clients already in some deep and profound ways. It awakens something within you. A life force, a kundalini energy, the divine feminine.

It’s classy, yet it’s designed to make you a better lover. It makes you move better and want to dance all the time. It’s for women, it’s fiercely feminine and it really is a gift.